The invention relates to automatic, premise-monitoring alarm systems as for example burglary, otherwise unauthorized access and/or fire alarm systems, and more particularly to a remote camouflage keypad for user input to the local premise's alarm control panel, as will be apparent in connection with the discussion further below of preferred embodiments and examples.
Premise-monitoring alarm systems monitor a given protected premise—say, for example, a residential home, a commercial property, a bank vault, access through a given door or throughway, or an ATM machine and the like—for the occurrence of a given alarm event:—e.g., an unwanted intrusion, unauthorized entry or smoke and so on. Some alarm events simply correspond to a “low battery” condition in either the alarm-event sensors or else the protected-premise controller/control panel. Upon detection of a given alarm event, the controller signals the alarm event to a pre-determined receiving site(s), which traditionally has been a central alarm-monitoring station. In the traditional case, the central alarm-monitoring station, which may be a public or private service, may manually process the signal by an attendant who can dispatch police or fire-fighters or alert the property-owners or take whatever other steps are appropriate.
More particularly the invention relates to an improvement over the conventional peripheral device which has served as the keypad for the local premise's local control panel.
A distinction is made here for clarification's sake between control panel and keypad. A control panel might be more aptly described as a cabinet. However, in the industry it is called “control panel,” perhaps because in earlier years all the necessary circuitry and devices could be contained in something the size more readily describable as a “panel.” Nowadays, however, such circuitry and devices are contained in a rather bulky cabinet, which is typically hidden out of sight in a closet or the like.
Keypad is the peripheral that is (i) often separate and remote from the control panel and (ii) provides ordinary users with an interface for an abbreviated set of inputs and outputs with the control panel. Physical access to the actual control panel is best reserved for professional installers and service personnel only.
Put differently, typically the control panel circuitry is contained in a moderately bulky housing which is preferably hid out of sight in some closet or secure interior room. Indeed access to the control panel is a matter best reserved for professional installers or service providers thereto, and not the actual end-use customers of such local premise-monitoring alarm system. Instead, the actual end-use customers (or let's say a relatively small set of authorized employees or parties thereof) are relatively limited as to what control instructions they can enter to their local premise-monitoring alarm control panel, and inter alia physically by way of a keypad.
Conventionally, keypads have been mounted next to doors that are protected, or elsewhere which is as close as possible to afford a pedestrian authorized party convenient walk-up access to enter codes or the like to disable within a given grace time an alarm event. To date such keypads are very visible. Even if the codes to disabling delayed-alarm events within the grace period are generally held secrets among a small set of authorized parties, the problem is that such keypads' key arrangement is permanently visible to non-authorized parties. Hence, a non-authorized observer observing an authorized user entering a code from afar might be able to discern the authorized party's finger stroke and hence stealthily deduce the code. For instance, a code of “6985” on a standard keypad is accomplished through a simple square of keystrokes on a standard keypad. Such a code is easily discerned from a far back vantage point.
It is an object of the invention to provide a nearly invisible keypad in the form of a glass keypad which, after a brief period of non-use, lapses into a sleep mode.
It is another object of the invention that such a nearly invisible—or disguised or concealed—keypad is only awaken from sleep mode by a knowledgeable touch the information about which is only given to an authorized set of users.
It is an alternate object of the invention that when the invisible—or otherwise disguised or concealed—keypad is awoken from sleep mode that it provides numeral and/or alphabetic keys in a randomly scrambled pattern such that one pattern from the next differs. That way, a distant observer observing a geometric pattern of finger strokes cannot simply deduce the code from common knowledge of a conventional keypad arrangement.
It is an additional object of the invention that the invisible—or otherwise disguised or concealed—keypad in accordance with the invention lapses into sleep mode in a nearly transparent or translucent state such that is “chameleon” with its background. In other words, if the invisible keypad goes transparent, all that is practically visible is the wallpaper of the supporting wall which carries the keypad. Hence there is no evident way to the uninformed on any such matters as (i) what is the function of such transparent/translucent piece of glass, (ii) how to awaken it into operative mode, and/or (iii) what to anticipate in operative mode if one successfully stumbles into awakening it into operative mode.
A number of additional features and objects will be apparent in connection with the following discussion of the preferred embodiments and examples with reference to the drawings.
The invention having been disclosed in connection with the foregoing variations and examples, additional variations will now be apparent to persons skilled in the art. The invention is not intended to be limited to the variations specifically mentioned.